We know how to compost food waste and human waste, without using much water. Sooner or later we will have to begin using this method, to save on water. I'm sure it will be complicated to implement such a plan in urban California, but it has to happen, eventually. Every spring, there are floods on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. We could be gathering this extra fresh water up and sending it to the southwest USA by means of pipeline. That would not solve the water shortage, but it would help the situation out there. I agree, the agricultural sector is an important piece of the California economy. However, we could be growing more vegetables and fruits here in the mid-west, and we could learn to live without all of the imported produce during the winter months.

Annie, It sounds like your biggest concern is reducing frost damage. It's a bit difficult for me to visualize your planting site, but as a general rule, apricots bloom the earliest, followed closely by J. plums, then peaches. Apples and pears bloom after peaches. So for your new planting since the apricot will naturally want to bloom first, I'd give it the most protection from southern exposure to try to delay blooming, while at the same time plant in a spot (if possible) where the cold air won't settle. Along those same lines, I'd plant the peaches in the second best spot. Because they bloom so early, apricots don't fruit very often up here and I ended up pulling mine out. If I can find one that blooms about the same time as peaches I may try apricots again. Sounds like you have a nice line-up of peaches. Actually, Cresthaven ripens after Loring. So your earliest peach will be Redhaven, then Loring (ripens about 2 weeks after Redhaven), lastly Cresthaven (which ripens about 10 days after Loring). The nurseryman you spoke with has misplaced concern with regard to hardiness. Hardiness is not an issue in OK (at least with any of the trees you've mentioned) no matter if the rootstocks are dwarf or standard. Standard rootstocks are more drought tolerant, so that may be an advantage to you. Regarding adding another apple. If you have space, I would do it. Apples require two different varieties for pollination, but generally pollination isn't an issue if there are some crab apples or other apple trees in the neighborhood. Nevertheless, you will be in competition with wildlife for your apples, so I would add another tree to increase your odds of successful harvest. Hman, I've read about your success using newspaper. I'll remember that as an option if I can't get enough mulch (although I have to admit, it does sound labor intensive). I have considered double planting the peach trees then removing every other one when they start crowding. Sometimes that's how pecan groves are managed (although they sell the harvested pecan wood). I guess the reason I haven't pursued it with peaches is that right now I've got more land than I can use. I've got about 5 out of 17 acres terraced and only have about 250 trees to go in this Spring which won't use all the terraces. If I ordered more trees, I could just fill up more terraces, or I suppose terrace more, if I needed to. My biggest concern about wasted space was that if there was too much space between the trees, I'd be wasting spray in the gaps, but for that alone, I don't think it would be worth it in my situation to double plant the peaches then remove every other one after a few years. My biggest concern is to have a full canopy at maturity, with minimal pruning to discourage crowding, while at the same time allowing enough space that the trees survive during a drought year. Planting on this scale is totally new to me, hence my wavering on what is the right spacing. Some differences are: -I currently don't irrigate but use mulch, but as mentioned, may not be able to use mulch, or at least mulch forced to reduce the mulched area. -I've always been able to train branches by tying them lower to form more horizontal spreading trees. I won't have the time to do that with the new trees (instead I plan to shape the trees with pruning only) so I don't know if the trees will be as spreading (i.e. take up as much space). Like I said I've seen several commercial orchards, but they operate totally different than I plan to. They irrigate like mad and pour the N to mature trees, neither of which I plan to do, so it's hard to know how much I've seen will be applicable to my planting. Regardless of what I end up doing, I appreciate your responses. If anything it helps me consider different aspects.

Nice photo Kendra. Your 1st picture looks like the beginnings of South West injury. To stop this from getting worse paint your tree with a flat white interior latex paint in a 50/50 water to paint ratio. Heres a link if you have any questions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qJtVd2k_lI With so many trees I would go to a big box store. Tell them what you are doing. Ask them to put a half gallon of interior white flat latex paint in a one gallon bucket. When you get home fill it the rest of the way with water and shake it up and you are ready to go. Most of your trees look like someone had tried to prune them into a Delayed Open Center form which is fine. However the work on some of them was never completed or they were left to do their own thing and the trees have been neglected for along time. There certainly is a lot of pruning that needs to be done. There is also more than one way to go about it depending on what form you ultimately want the trees to take. Here is a link that may be helpful but is not directed at older neglected trees. It will however give you some ideas that may be helpful and has good descriptions of each tree form. http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/hil/ag29.html I see lots of advice and people trying to tell you what you should do. I dont think we are that point yet. There are at least three basic tree forms you should be considering. Each with its own advantages and disadvantages. They all have their merits and only you can decide which one is right for you and your family. A few things to keep in mind.. You do not have to prune them all the same form. Even if you decide to train them all to the same form you do not need to do them all at once. Apples are usually trained to one of three forms. They are "Central Leader" "Open Center" and sometimes "Delayed Open Center" You should read the descriptions from the link I provided above as I will not be describing them in any detail here. Instead I will give my personal take on what I think are important to the home orchardist and your trees in particular. Central Leader Trees trained to this form are tall Christmas tree shaped trees. They have good fruit production. The disadvantage is that they are tall which makes spraying, picking and pruning harder as you will need ladders and long reach pickers. The trees that look like they were left to their own designs from the start may be a good candidate for this form. Not that you cannot train these trees to either of the other two forms but this may be the easiest and quickest form to achieve with these trees. To do this you would start by cutting any dead or diseased wood then move on the crossing branches that rub. After this cut any branches with bad crotch angles then cut any wood that is growing toward the center of the tree. The next step would be to thin out the branches to let in light and air. You dont want to have scaffold branches all attached at the same pint on the trunk. If you can have them spaced vertically on the trunk 6" or more apart and branching off in different directions. Open Center/Vase Trees trained to this form have less production than the other two forms. However this form has other advantages. They are much shorter which makes them easy to prune, easy to pick and easy to spray and easy to inspect for diseases and infestations. I see none of your trees pruned to this form. If you were going to change to this form you would have to severely top your trees and you would not get any fruit the first season. With trees the size you have there would be some debate whether you should top them in one radical cut or over two seasons. If you chose this form and the trees are still dormant I think I would go with the more radical approach on the smaller trees. On the larger trees I would cut off all the small twigs and cut the current scaffold branches back severely to like 2-3 out from the trunk. The following year I would cut the trunk at 24"-30" from the ground. If it were me I would do this with the smaller trees in one cut while still dormant. If you chose to do that there is nothing wrong with doing only 1-5 trees the 1st year. That way you can see the results and how the trees respond and learn the pruning steps and how they shape the trees before doing more of them in proceeding years. Delayed Open Center The majority of your trees are trained to this form and you may wish to keep this form. If it were me I would keep this form on all the larger trees that are currently in this form. They still need a lot of pruning though. Start by cutting all the dead wood then move on to cutting the crossing branches that are rubbing against other branches or that may rub when it gets windy. Always preferring the larger healthier branches so long as they are not 50% or larger than 50% of the trunks diameter where they are attached. Then move onto cutting water sprouts and any wood growing toward the center of the tree. After this cut any branches that will shade out other branches preferring the branches that have better crotch angles. Then cut out any small branches or wood that is necessary to allow for good air flow and light penetration and you are done. Remember if you have to cut something because of a bad crotch angle or because its shading out a lower branch or because its diseased it does not mean new branches will not grow to replace them. This is the beauty of pruning. The pruning you do will spur more growth and more branches will grow. Cutting out a bad one will often cause many more to grow and you can then cut off the ones with bad crotch angles or that will rub or shade other branches and keep the best new ones next pruning season. Its all a learning experience and you will get better and faster at it as years go by. Most of the good videos are on Open Center pruning but there are others. If you would like I will post some of the better pruning videos I have found if you think you will have time to view them.

You're a little closer than I thought. Perhaps you're using the old National Arboretum zone map. I think all the newer maps place KC in zone 6. I've had real problems with apricots and Japanese hybrid plums. I believe K-State Ext. reports apricots only fruit one in five. My Jap. type plums bloomed the same time as the apricots. As I mentioned there are some later blooming Jap. types. Shiro is supposed to do well, but the consensus on this forum is the fruit is pretty marginal (flavor-wise) so I've never been interested in growing it. Emerald Beaut is supposed to be excellent and a late bloomer, but like I said I've never tried it either. My site seems to run a bit warmer during winter, than surrounding areas. An old zone map shows a small circle of zone 6 completely surrounded by zone 5. I'm in that little zone 6 circle. The new zone maps now show everything around as zone 6. The warmness seems to tease blooms out a little earlier than some surrounding sites, so it's possible you may not have quite as severe a problem as I. But I still wouldn't count on dependable crops from most Jap. type plums. Peaches are my strongest interest. You can look at the 2010 peach report for my favorites. I'd recommend picking an early variety, midseason, and late, if you want to have peaches all season long. My pics would be PF1, Redhaven, Coralstar and Autumnstar. If you can't get all those from one nursery, don't sweat it, just substitute another Midwest variety from what the nursery offers. I'm thinking Adams County Nursery has most of those varieties. By the way, when I say Midwest peach varieties, I'm using that term very loosely. Anything developed or tested proven in NJ would qualify as a Midwest variety in my mind. Likewise pretty much anything developed in Ontario will work in the Midwest. They can be recogized with the letters Har somewhere in the name (named after the Harrow breeding program.) Of course any peaches developed in Michigan would probably work. This includes the Haven series (anything with Haven in the name). Paul Friday's releases, which have the letters PF in the name (very creative), and Fruit Acres releases, which have the word "star" somewhere in the name. What you really want to avoid starting out are California varieties, and varieties from the southern states (like Georgia). There are exceptions to this of course, you just have to be pretty careful, and willing to accept you may be pulling those trees out.